South Korea Bans Selfie-Stick Sales 111
Rambo Tribble writes "South Korea has instituted large fines for selling unregistered "selfie-sticks". The problem arises because many of the devices are using Bluetooth radio spectrum, and must be certified to do so legally. Expressing doubts that the regulations and stiff fines will influence sales, one official said of them, "It's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way, but it is nonetheless a telecommunication device subject to regulation, and that means we are obligated to crack down on uncertified ones."
Fuuuuuck (Score:1, Insightful)
Selfie-sticks? Can we please just exterminate the selfie generation and start over?
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KA--REN GiLL-AN WiLL BE EX-TERM-i-NAT-ED.
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Already in the works [ew.com], though Hulu picked up the episodes that won't be aired.
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These are for doing group shots without leaving the camera-person out. Not such a bad idea for times when you can't find someone else to operate the camera.
(Side note: spellcheck suggestions for cameraperson; "camera person", "camera-person", "camerawomen". Have a penis? No camera for you.)
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You do know that a spell checker is not a thesaurus, right?
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Re:Fuuuuuck (Score:5, Informative)
"-man" as a suffix is gender neutral, usually. "-person" etc just misunderstand the etymology.
The old English roots are:
* "man", meaning roughly "human", any age or sex
* "wer", adult male (survives in a few words like virile and werewolf)
* "wif", adult female (of any marital status)
Over time we lost the male-specific word, with "man" doing double-duty for male and neuter meanings, while the original meaning of "wif" became "wif-man" became "woman".
Re:Fuuuuuck (Score:5, Interesting)
* "wer", adult male (survives in a few words like virile and werewolf)
(Puts on pedantic hat.) You are correct that the Germanic/Old English "were" survives in words like "werewolf" and, for Tolkien fans only, "weregild" (as in "This I will have as weregild for my father's death" from the Silmarillion [goodreads.com]).
"Virile," however, comes from the Latin "virilis" [etymonline.com] via French. They are kinda sorta related but not really.
This is a gross oversimplification as any language scholar can tell you, but a fun exercise for any English language speaker is to study the roots of common "vulgar" vs. "high-class" words and find that their roots map very closely to Latin vs. Germanic. Old English was - once the native Celts and Romano-Britons had been displaced - largely a relic of its "Germanic" (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) conquerors and the language of the people. After the Norman Conquest in 1066 (Normans "Nord-mann" being transplanted Vikings who learned French) the language of the nobility in England became French (which was based on Latin) for hundreds of years. While over time the two melded together, you can still (again, oversimplifying) in many cases tell the upper-class terms for things (derived from French/Latin) from the lower-class terms for things (derived from Old English/Germanic). For example:
It doesn't hold true in all cases but it is in general a pretty fascinating window into the evolution of the English language, FWIW.
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and, for Tolkien fans only, "weregild" (as in "This I will have as weregild for my father's death"
Or Norse/Germanic mythology, from which Tolkien wasn't too shy about generously "sampling".
Re:Fuuuuuck (Score:5, Informative)
Some of my old film cameras have a feature where I can press a button and then the camera takes a picture after some time - usually long enough for me to get back in front of the camera.
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Some of my old film cameras have a feature where I can press a button and then the camera takes a picture after some time - usually long enough for me to get back in front of the camera.
You will find one other exciting feature on that old film camera that is lacking on most smartphones: a flat edge to allow it to sit steadily pointed at the subject. Try doing that with a new iPhone 6 and you are gonna have a bad time. So it's either haul around an awkward tiny tripod that clamps on to the phone, or use the aforementioned "Selfie stick". Why is that so hard to cope with for so many slashdotters?
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Re: Fuuuuuck (Score:1)
I see your point, but I feel I need to bring something to your attention. I was talking about selfies.
Spray and pray is perfectly acceptable.
I will heed your advice if I am ever in a war zone, or see a pretty sunset, thank you, sir. Good day.
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Of course, your old school film camera just hovered there in mid-air when using this mysterious 'timer' feature, right?
Gravity (Score:2, Troll)
Hmm. We need something to stop the camera from falling to the ground.... A wall perhaps. A table. A chair, or perhaps a rock.
If you want to get serious you can always use a tripod but that's for geeky people. I guess that these things don't exist in the selfie world.
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Hmm. We need something to stop the camera from falling to the ground.... A wall perhaps. A table. A chair, or perhaps a rock.
If you want to get serious you can always use a tripod but that's for geeky people. I guess that these things don't exist in the selfie world.
The days where people dared to trust strangers enough to ask them to take a picture are also long gone.
Selfies are easier to aim than timer pictures (Score:2)
Selfies taken with front-facing cameras let you aim the camera for exactly the angle you want, as opposed to setting the timer and guessing. The catch, of course, is that you're limited by the length of your arm, and by having your arm in the picture unless you want the camera really close, so selfie-sticks give you more compositional flexibility. They're still annoying, of course, but if you want your picture in front of Mt. Rushmore, you want it.
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Comment pointer http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]
Re:Fuuuuuck (Score:4, Interesting)
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Regarding "cameraperson". Perhaps the word you're looking for is photographer. Cameraperson sounds more like someone in the television or film industry.
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You do know a spellchecker is for spelling, right? As in it's hard to misspell camera-man as cameraperson, while at lease camerawoman has the same number of letters?
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Depends on where you live. "Spelt" isn't usually considered correct US usage, but there are other places where they speak English.
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the sticks aren't subject to regulation
it's the bt remote that they're sold with that is.
and in asia, there's sellers now on every tourist street for those. I suspect it's not so much as needing regulation though for the sake of electronics emissions as it is for weeding out the clone makers.
you see, you can buy the exact same thing for couple of bucks OR you can pay fifty bucks for it the exact same thing!
(do you even need certification for bluetooth? huh? it's just off the shelf chip.)
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It's the price we pay for having equally eye-rolling habits and devices when we were young.
Curious... (Score:3)
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I think South Korea's regulatory framework requires a shitload of money be paid to the government to sell your devices. This extortion is clad in the veil of "regulations".
Notice how you are guilty if it is an "unregistered" device, not a "non-compliant" device. That's the trademark of government corruption.
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Amd in what regard is that different to the EU, the US or Japan or Australia or China?
Hint look on your phone, it has an FC / CE sign!
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They do allow for type certification, but still generally require each product to be tested to make sure the manufacturer didn't do something stupid like try to solder an external antenna onto a module that's only supposed to use a PCB antenna. It costs a lot less than getting full certification for your own design.
The other problem is that most of these things were imported from China and never certified for Korea. Maybe they use different 2.4GHz bands to other countries, I don't know, but TFA says they ar
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There certainly is some terrifying dodgy stuff on the market(you don't even have to fleabay it yourself, plenty of the slightly downmarket stuff in
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I don't have details I'm afraid, I only heard about it when one of our products was certified for Korea.
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Selfie Stick? (Score:5, Informative)
For those of us who don't know, a "selfie stick" is just a long pole or boom with a mount for a phone so you can take a picture from farther away or without the phone being in the picture.
I've seen them mostly for folks riding on the dirt where they have a GoPro or something on the end and are taking shots of the front of the vehicle zooming through the dirt.
[John]
Re:Selfie Stick? (Score:4, Informative)
In this case, it is a a long pole including a bluetooth trigger to take the picture.
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Ahh, that explains the regulatory issues. Thanks.
[John]
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Well, not really. I was looking to see what might be causing the government concern. I started at the top of my decision analysis tree with the first node, "Remember: Government just wants your money." If yes, done.
So, done.
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Why not just have a mechanical trigger?
1. Cost
2. Reliability
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Because you can't get one of those extend-y grabby arm toys at Target or Walmart for $10? Some of those can take decades of abuse and still work. Hell, you could probably build the thing yourself using those parts, but I'd rather pay someone else to do it.
Far more likely that it's been patented, not in production from the holder of said patent, and no one wants to pay the licensing.
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what they do is they sell the selfie stick with one of these http://www.fasttech.com/produc... [fasttech.com]
the box for this device is in the place where the phone is going to be and they walk around tourist streets selling them.
saw them last week in bangkok. I did not see them the last time I went to bangkok ~6 months ago, but last week they seemed pretty popular.
now you can buy the exact same device("certified) for 40-60 bucks if you want, but why would you? it's just a bluetooth button. it's bluetooth because that wa
Bluetooth (Score:1)
This seems odd to me. Is bluetooth not an accepted standard in Korea?
The sticks themselves are just an extensible pole with a clip that can be adjusted to hold most cellular phones, no radio at all.
They commonly come with a little bluetooth remote that can be used to activate the camera. It's not using any frequency that any other bluetooth device wouldn't, and would be less bandwidth than - for example - some bluetooth headphones running AD2P streaming.
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Yes, and as such every device must be certified to attest compliance to the standard.
They're cracking down on cheap non-certified sticks from China.
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That makes more sense. I'm fairly sure that "uncertified devices" goes way beyond bluetooth selfie remotes though... but low-hanging fruit I suppose.
so that's what those are .... (Score:5, Funny)
better left to the privacy of the bedroom (Score:2)
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So "banned if bribe not sufficiently high (aka licensing fee)". Better?
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Fat and retarded, ok. But you take that American back this very instant!
How is this specific to Selfie Sticks? (Score:3, Interesting)
How is this different from ANY unregistered/knockoff/Chinese copy Bluetooth device? Why suddenly the issue with "selfie sticks"?
What a pain, though, to have to register in each country. Why, I'm shocked, shocked, that FCC registration is not enough. ;)
(OK, SRSLY, assume EU has some common registration. But how do smaller countries deal with this? Are there other region-wide registrations other than EU?)
Or is it that Selfie Sticks are just so wildly popular that suddenly this has become some sort of problem? I'd assume that by next Christmas, this will be a non-issue, as South Koreans will all be hopping on 500mbit/sec pogo sticks.
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Or is it that Selfie Sticks are just so wildly popular that suddenly this has become some sort of problem?
From the summary and a skim of the article, it's just that this is a Bluetooth device that has not gone through the proper registration for South Korea.
"It's not going to affect anything in any meaningful way, but it is nonetheless a telecommunication device subject to regulation, and that means we are obligated to crack down on uncertified ones."
By all apparent expectations, it is harmless and not strong enough to interfere with anyone else's systems. Despite that, South Korea actually tries to follow their own laws, and selling an unapproved device that includes an active EM signal is illegal.
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Why suddenly the issue with "selfie sticks"?
And Bluetooth too - the 30' menace. When it doesn't make sense on a technology level, look at politics.
Probably super-cheap Bluetooth electronics are becoming popular, and the last thing you want to do is to have people realize that they don't need to be regulated by a government. So, you need to launch a crackdown operation, but you do it to a group that has very little political power, so you don't have to catch hell from your boss when you crack down on some
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And Bluetooth too - the 30' menace.
How do you know it only has a 30' range? These things being untested/uncertified and all.
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These things being untested/uncertified and all.
I'd bet they were tested many times in development (or are a re-package of a licensed device). They just weren't tested by the officials. It's like Marijuana in the US. It was legal, but needed a tax stamp. It's all about the tax stamp, not the "safety" of it.
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Maybe yes, but probably no. Just getting the Bluetooth chipset to work is probably not that hard. RF testing is expensive and complicated. So it is unlikely that testing went beyond a basic functionality test. It is unlikely that any testing is done by rogue vendors to measure radiated power, frequency spectrum. Furthermore, certified designs take into account failure modes from contamination, vibration, production variation, etc. In the case of intentional transmitters like this, a failure mode could
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Maybe yes, but probably no. Just getting the Bluetooth chipset to work is probably not that hard. RF testing is expensive and complicated.
They won't have done any testing worth mentioning. But they also won't have done their own design, so they might well produce something noisy but it won't have long range.
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the chips are the same chips with same antenna pattern as any other bluetooth device using the same chip.
there's probably one original manufacturer for this, selling it at 500% profit margin, and complained to authorities selling unlicensed devices.
what it is, is a micro and off the shelf bluetooth chip/module. it's essentially a two button wireless keyboard. the bluetooth keyboards sold at the stalls all over south east asia are not certified any more than they are(and really, for these devices you can jus
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the chips are the same chips with same antenna pattern as any other bluetooth device using the same chip.
Possibly. These things were probably built based on the chip manufacturer's reference design. If so, it might be pretty easy to certify the new product by similarity* to others already tested. If S. Korea will approve devices based on thhis, it raaises the question of why the Selfie-Stick manufacturer didn't just submit the paperwork.
*Often times, RF module vendors sell 'pre-certified' boards so hobbyists and small manufacturers have minimal or no additional work to do to operate their device legally.
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And Bluetooth too - the 30' menace.
How do you know it only has a 30' range? These things being untested/uncertified and all.
How much power do you think they put in these things? My bet would be the minimum possible and also the cheapest. You're probably lucky to get 30' out of it.
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, and the last thing you want to do is to have people realize that they don't need to be regulated by a government. So, you need to launch a crackdown operation
Or they are protecting consumers from rogue devices that either jam/interfere with other signals whether intentionally or unintentionally. Not all regulation is evil.
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That's why the first article we saw a few weeks ago was "South Korean hospitals and air traffic control plagued by Bluetooth interference from selfie-sticks!"
Oh, wait, we didn't see that, and never will. You can file this one in the same folder with taxi medallions and Uber - regulation to protect a taxed industry from an untaxed competitor under the guise of "public benefit."
Re: How is this specific to Selfie Sticks? (Score:2)
Not the point. If your neighbor had a Bluetooth device using 5xe allowed transmit power, you couldn't even use your own equipment properly.
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Does it affect businesses? No.
Does it affect the boomer generation? No.
Ok, crack down on it.
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But how do smaller countries deal with this? Are there other region-wide registrations other than EU?)
Smaller countries often take different approaches. Small countries next door to a large country may adopt the larger country's standard; especially if they get most of their imports from or through that larger country. For example, Bermuda accepts either US or Canada approval, but you still need to register with Bermuda. Enforecement is typically weak in countries like that because the equipment is probably coming through the US or Canada anyhow.
Some countries are "anything goes" because it hasn't be
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Or is it that Selfie Sticks are just so wildly popular that suddenly this has become some sort of problem?
Yes. [gmarket.co.kr]
We had that in the UK (Score:2)
You could buy all sorts of devices to plug into your phone line, back when we had a clueless government monopoly running the phone system. Some had green stickers saying "this is good" and some had red triangles warning that it could not be connected to your phone system. Absolutely nobody gave a shit about the stickers and plugged whatever they wanted into their phone system. Eventually the stickers went away.
Only UNREGULATED devices are banned (Score:2)
Misleading title. From TFA:
"Because they use Bluetooth, the devices are considered to be a "telecommunication device" and must be tested and registered with the South Korean agency that oversees such gadgets, an official at the Central Radio Management Office told the AFP newswire."
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Exactly. ZOMG! Something has been banned! It's like every slashdot article is clickbait these days.
Just got back from Europe (Score:1)
The Asian tourists were using these like crazy, often stopping right in the middle of crowded places like La Rambla in Barcelona and just shoving the stick straight out in front of people. I had never seen them until 2 weeks ago but gave some consideration to snapping at least one on half after being damn near smacked in the face.
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Sounds like an excellent opportunity for photobombing. Hell, they can't even ask you to stop being less rude in public than they're being. Hadn't really thought of this before this article, so thanks, now I have a plan!
It's all about the Won (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't let the "ban" fool you. This has nothing to do with bluetooth technology - that's only the legal loophole being used. Since the selca-bong or selfie sticks came on the scene, they've exploded in the retail sector - but stores missed the boat and street venders have made a killing in sales. Sometimes selling cheap Chinese manufactured devices for as much as W30,000 (about US$30). Seeing that they missed the boat, the big box retailers pushed the regulators to crack down on "illegal" sticks. This is all
2nd thought - erotic selfie sticks ? (Score:2)
A very dirty thought but that kind of selfie stick I thought off and the phone attached to one share a common feature ..
bzzzzzz bzzzzzz bzzzzzzz bzzzzzzz bzzzzzzz
Should be named the narcissistick (Score:1)
It's a good thing... (Score:2)
the government is out there looking out for us.
What's the Korean word for.... (Score:2)
"Fucking waste of money"
I understand the motivation behind this, but the proliferation of cheap chips and the rise of the kitchen table chip hacker is putting paid to any particular organization attempting to control what happens to chips that anyone can buy damned near anywhere. They might find and close some small shops, but ultimately, I believe that they are only participating an expensive form of mental masturbation.
There are millions and millions of teens and 20-somethings creating demand for this ite